Photo by Deb Gau Tim Van Moer answered an audience question during the Marshall School Board candidate forum Tuesday night. Six candidates are running for a total of three open seats on the school board.

MARSHALL — Candidates running for Marshall School Board discussed a wide variety of education issues, from classroom learning to career exploration, at a public forum this week.

School board candidates kicked off a series of local forums held in Marshall on Tuesday. They answered questions submitted by the public, and from local moderators.

A total of three seats on the school board are up for election this fall. Candidates include current school board members Matt Coleman and Anne Marie Vorbach, and challengers Mary Swanson, Timothy Van Moer, Anne Veldhuisen and Charlotte Wahle.

Right away, panelists were asked how they could help fill the workforce pipeline in Marshall. Candidates talked about a couple different sides of the question: the issue of teacher shortages at MPS, as well as the need to prepare students as future members of the workforce.

“The workforce issue has been an issue for many years. Even before COVID, there’s been a teacher shortage, a support staff shortage,” Coleman said. He said MPS gets fewer applicants for jobs than it has in the past. “What we’ve done since I’ve been on the board, through negotiations we have raised the starting teacher pay. I’m not sure if that’s helped, but it sure doesn’t hurt.” Coleman also said Minnesota has state programs designed to help bring new teachers to school districts.

Swanson said she has seen staff shortages in the health care industry, where she works. MPS needed to approach the staff shortage issue from a variety of angles, including recruitment, she said.

“We learn in health care, you’ve got to start recruiting young. And so you need to start looking at those students that are interested in teaching … and then offer them opportunities so they can get their license and college degrees,” Swanson said.

Veldhuisen said encouraging a sense of community pride and connection might help encourage young people to come back to Marshall.

“I think not only getting families and kids invested in our district, in the future that would lead to more and more teachers who would feel comfortable and even desire coming back,” she said.

Van Moer looked at the issue from the perspective of encouraging MPS students as future workforce members.

“I feel we don’t necessarily inform our students of the available opportunities within the community,” he said. Van Moer thought MPS should partner with local industries to raise young people’s awareness of those opportunities, “And then see if we can help educate kids to fill the needs.”

Wahle said MPS had a lot of resources it could draw on, like education partnerships in the community.

“I think that the groundwork is already there. There are a lot of folks that are working to lift up those opportunities,” she said. “But I think that there’s ways that we as school board members can enhance those efforts.” For example, Wahle said MPS could work to raise awareness of career expos at Southwest Minnesota State University and Marshall High School.

Vorbach said everything school board members do comes back to helping develop students and staff.

“When we are doing our job well, we’re part of creating a school district that works for all the kids in Marshall, and helps them to become the people they want to be, whether that’s industrial or whether that’s going on to college,” she said.

Candidates were also asked to share what they saw as key concerns for public education, and how MPS could address those concerns.

“I think as our community in Marshall and the surrounding areas grows, it becomes more and more diverse, and it becomes more of a challenge to meet the needs of each child in their own unique ways,” Veldhuisen said. “With change and diversity comes its own challenges … to maintain consistency in the classrooms, and to make sure that each child is not only seen and heard but feels valued and safe.”

“It seems like we’re doing a lot to address those needs, to make our students feel welcome and supported,” Wahle said. “But I would love to continue to lift all of those things up.” Wahle said she’s had good experiences with staff members at Park Side Elementary who speak Spanish. It not only helped students in her son’s kindergarten classes, but he was learning some Spanish as well.

Vorbach said she agreed with the need for Marshall students to feel valued and safe at school. In addition, she said, “One value I hold for our schools that I would like to see happen is that we’re able to hire teachers of various cultural backgrounds.” Vorbach said she was also “excited” to see MPS tackle the issue of developing children’s reading skills.

Coleman said one challenge facing MPS was a decrease in regular school attendance.

“Absenteeism in kids is becoming a big problem all over the country,” including in Marshall, Coleman said. “I talked to (Brian) Jones, our high school principal. Three weeks into the school year, he said there are a lot of kids who have already missed 25% of their days. I don’t know how we address that — we call the guardians, the parents, whoever we can get ahold of … That’s another big challenge.”

“The most things that I hear are safety concerns in all the schools,” Swanson said. “Our teachers and our students shouldn’t have to worry about being safe in school. They should be able to be there and learn, and not have to be worried about physical attacks or verbal assaults. I’m not sure how we fix that. I think it’s a problem nationwide.”

“I believe we struggle to prepare students to meet the needs within the community,” Van Moer said. MPS does well at preparing students for college, he said, “But we tend to send those kids off to other communities then, and we fail to meet the needs within our own community, and preparing for what’s available here.”

Van Moer said he also felt that fears about the diversity at MPS has caused some families to pull students away from public schooling. The district needed to work with the community to build up trust, he said.